No change in profession.

Now I'm a plumber. Who knows what I'll be next week. Oh yeah, a flooring specialist.

As someone who has been out of work for a year and a half I found this very interesting. WTF? I know employers are free to hire whoever they want but to disqualify everyone who is currently unemployed makes no sense to me. Nearly everyone I know that is unemployed is unemployed involuntarily. As in through no fault of their own. My employer of 20 years made me Employee Of The Year for 2005 and persona non grata in spring of 2006. Nothing changed, I was still doing my job and doing it well. My theory is that my previous rate of pay increases and bonuses put me out of the acceptable pay range for a lout with no college education. I actually saw my new boss choke when she saw my pay rate during my last employee evaluation. Two months later I'm on my ass. I took me 9 months to get a job after that. That new job lasted 10 months before I moved on to what I thought was going to be a great job(if things get better I would go back to work for them in a heartbeat). The employer was going to open an office in KC and I would sell and run jobs from that office. Then came the great collapse of 2008 followed by the greater collapse of 2009. The new office never became. I then had no job again and it continues today. I/we have several ideas for self employment. All of them will require money we don't have at this time.

Jobs? Who's Got Jobs?
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I keep hearing the Guvm't saying things are getting better but we can expect the jobless situation to carry on for years. Great. I have been without work for 1 year and 5 months. I have applied for and sent in resumes for hundreds of jobs and have not received one single call, letter or email for an interview. I have received 3 or 4 emails of denials. Those have been in reference to jobs on the lower end of my work history. Custodians, janitors, lawn care, warehouse. All those jobs have been kind enough to send emails saying overqualified, not qualified, or position filled. All the rest? Nothing, nada. How can the government say things are getting better when more and more people are losing their jobs and more and more people are losing their unemployment benefits? Every month results in a net loss in jobs, but the powers that be insist on claiming that all is better. I say bullshit! How can sales improve when more people don't have an income? Am I being dense about this or am I missing something here? I don't think so. I have a great resume, an outstanding work history and lots of experience and have never had a problem getting a job. But in this high unemployment scenario my background, skills and experience don't count for squat. What everyone looks for now is a portion of the resume that includes a diploma from a college. So in this environment I think the burden is on me to provide an income, not rely on a corporation to provide an exchange of labor for dollars. I have several ideas but they all require an immediate injection funds in one quantity or another and in this economy I am hesitant to start any sort of business. So I continue on, working at what ever I can get, doing whatever I can do and deciding on what direction to take in these difficult times.